This isn't players. This is people, in general. It's a sad reflection of our society.
Why should people spend more time than is necessary to get their desired result?
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zaphtasticMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I have posted on this topic so many times in the last few months... looks like it took the first few big farms to hit for people to see what the Foundry is REALLY about for most players.
Anyway, reposting something from COH... Ye Olde Historye ofe COHe Farme Storye Arce*
Let me tell you a story about farming in City of Heroes. Note that the chronology may not be 100% accurate and I may be leaving some stuff out -- but all the stuff below happened at one point. I leave the drawing of any NW foundry parallels to the reader. Don't worry if you don't get some of the COH-specific slang... the point should be clear regardless.
Back in beta and shortly after launch, there were the stock mob farms. Family and Freakshow were enemy groups that didn't have any dangerous abilities, so the farmers would set up missions with maps that allowed for a LOT of spawns to be herded together, and just ran those. These were pretty vanilla, and comparable to running some 'farmy' official content (such as the Television story arc). But this period was pretty short, as farmers discovered the wonders of custom enemy groups.
First came boss farms: boss-only enemy groups without any meaningful attacks or with very pronounced weak points. At one point Rikti comm officer farms were all the rage, too -- these guys were LT level, but were basically pushovers... so you'd have custom enemy groups consisting of nothing but them. These were very lucrative, as you'd get a ton more xp from killing a boss than a lt and a lot more xp from killing a lt than a minion, and these bosses (or LTs) were clumped together for easy AOEability. Paragon reacted by nerfing xp from custom enemy groups unless they had one spawn of each type (boss, lt, minion).
Then came the friendly mob farms: lots of friendly mobs scattered on the map set to follow the player that didn't have attacks (and thus couldn't steal xp/tickets from the player), but a whole lot of player-buffing skills (kinetics defenders were typical for this). This was pretty popular for a time, and it was effective at powerlevelling. So Paragon required all custom mobs to have a basic attack, and only allowed the FIRST ally mob from each map to cast any abilities other than the basic attack. While this nerfed this specific kind of farm, it also nerfed quite a few legitimate story arcs that had you fighting as part of a team (such as Teen Phalanx Forever, one of the best storyarcs IMO)
Somewhere along the road came another targeted nerf: cutting xp from custom enemies unless they had a certain amount of powers. The formula was pretty convoluted, but basically you had to use their 'hard' presets for best effect (except for some special cases). This eliminated a lot of unoptimized farms, but left the optimized ones (or the ones using stock mobs) untouched. Also, Paragon occasionally nerfed the xp of special mob groups.. let me tell you how great it felt when I realized that the Hydra enemies I was using for a custom story arc (they fit the story) were only giving 50% of the xp of a normal mob because everyone was farming Hydras in Perez Park circa 2006 or whatever.
Somewhat parallel to this, some farmers were making custom farms that were tailored to a specific build. Fire farms and CEBR (claws/elec brute) farms were the most common, where the damage types done by the enemies were the ones that the powersets were most effective against, and the mobs themselves were weak to the build's primary damage type. These were HUGE, and there was no easy way to handle this without severely nerfing the powersets themselves... so Paragon basically admitted defeat at this point. Even at the end of COH's life, fire farms and CEBR farms were definitely a thing... they covered most of the browser, and made up most of the "Hall of Fame" (story arcs with 1k+ plays and 5-star averages).
Ambush versions of fire and CEBR farms were also super-popular. Basically you'd set up chained ambushes to spawn lots and lots and lots of enemies on the player... which would be easily defeated without the player having to move from the entrance, or (in some cases) even just killing themselves on the player's damage shields. This was kind of reminiscent of the old 'gather every single mob on the map into a burn patch' Tanker farms of 2004-2005. Many farms used patrols instead, which had the same effect on certain maps (and would continue working even if ambushes were nerfed)
Paragon also tried the exact same thing Cryptic seems to be trying now: banning and removing farms. This was (as expected) useless, as farmers just disguised their farms as legit content ('meow' was a keyword to search for them, for instance).
Summary (TLDR)
During the entire life of the COH MA, there were ALWAYS farms. They were ALWAYS at the top, no matter what Paragon tried. Sure, after a patch there was a day or two when the previous farms were broken, but the authors just came up with new farms. This is basically an unwinnable cat-and-mouse game. If you take drastic measures like removing all rewards from player-created content altogether or severely limiting the editor's capabilities, you can 'win'... but in my POV, that cost is not worth it. What you need to do is let the farmers farm, let the RPers RP, let the story authors make stories, let the challenge / hack-and-slash people make their challenge maps. We're All In This Together (tm).
Bonus part, not mentioned above: the brief period between I14 and I15 (I think?) where MA badges (click x items, free y hostages, get z ratings, etcetera) were still a thing. There were thousands of storyarcs dedicated to getting the badges and nothing else. Just like farming arcs, they crowded out almost everything else from the browser, so Paragon made the decision to remove 95% of those badges (and just leave the trivially-achievable ones). Note that NW has very similar achievements, so it's very possible we'll see something like this here -- especially since the foundry achievements actually have material rewards.
* yeah, the "e"s are superfluous on purpose. COME AT ME BRO!11
drakedge2Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Ya'see, this is what I was complaining about the day or so after release when these farm quests started to show up and take away all the plays from the true content like mine and other people's great stories.
Now to correct the problem they hurt everyone. Short sighted people looking for their easy way to max level have thus ruined the foundry content even further. First they took away plays from good content, filled up all the pages of each catagory, and now they caused a big nerf to the foundry as a whole.
Bravo farmers... what part of the foundry are you going to ruin next?
A story driven quest, with a fun and challenging amount of combat, that takes you into the world of Planescape, carefully hand crafted by me.
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zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Just put a tab for "Farm" and advertise it. Let them do what they do. Keep the farms out of the general content. Like zaph says, you can't stop it. Just give it it's place so we can find the real content we want.
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drakedge2Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Just put a tab for "Farm" and advertise it. Let them do what they do. Keep the farms out of the general content. Like zaph says, you can't stop it. Just give it it's place so we can find the real content we want.
A story driven quest, with a fun and challenging amount of combat, that takes you into the world of Planescape, carefully hand crafted by me.
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sandolphanMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 25Arc User
edited May 2013
(I posted this in a different thread)
Just make mobs that cannot reach their attacker because of AI (wont walk over traps) or physical barriers give no xp and reset them. Or perhaps summon the attacker to them such as Everquest mobs used to do.
I enjoyed both the quests, and the exp and the items, I was levling my account through other peoples quests which was awesome, I like it alot, infact you have ****ed up so much, I wont even play this anymore, I was a founder on my other account, but **** this ****. Never ever gonna buy anything just ****ing things up all the time.
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nightguy1133Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited May 2013
Well... You just lost 8 players, I know you could care less because it's only 8... but it's pretty pathetic that you would punish the whole community for the actions of a bunch of big mouthed streamers... You should've tested this before you went into open beta. All of my friends started playing this 'cause of the foundry since there's only one long *** story line... This game IS the Foundry. There's no other reason to play it, in reality. I have done around 12 foundries and gained two bars of xp... Which is embarrassingly horrid. Fix your ****.
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isakongmingMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited May 2013
Nerfing XP to end powerleveling? I can understand that, defeats a purpose.
Nerfing Blue drops? I can understand that, stops everyone from being deck out easily.
Nerfing green drops? Hitting a grey area here, these are not hard to get outside the foundry and only serves to frustrate people as a nerf just to nerf.
Nerfing white drops? Stupid, plain and simple. No point to this AT ALL.
Nerfing gold? Now we are hitting DERP DURP DITTY DAY levels of stupid. Gold has NO VALUE, you cannot get AD with it, nor ZEN. Gold can only get you potions and injury kits and an endless supply of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> companions and mounts. It cannot ruin the economy since the economy is AD/ZEN based.
All this did was make a whole lot of people not want to do ANY foundry content at all since the cost is now less than the reward. The foundry was instantly made into nothing more than a money sink.
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zovyaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Surprisingly, the nerf to Foundry will not stop people from playing Foundry quests, they will prefer to play the farm quests more now. 2 days. Just watch the quest names in the Foundry list.
Well... at least some of us had our time with the Foundry. I really feel bad for the rest of you just coming into it. You are going to be handed a tool to build something that no one is going to want to use.
So a "farm" mission has more plays than mine? That "farm" mission will never be featured, so why should I care?
Making the foundry not rewarding because people used it to level quickly in a game that doesn't really take all that long to level in makes no sense at all.
Exploits are bad obviously, monsters not fighting back etc. Those should be reported and removed until patched.
They went way too far with this nerf. Foundry will become a distraction like in STO, which is such a shame.
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spiderbrigadeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 14Arc User
edited May 2013
Do we actually know what the adjustments are? I see a lot of people saying that they "went too far" or have otherwise destroyed the viability of doing real foundry quests but as far as I know all we have is the patch notes saying "Foundry experience has been tweaked for balancing purposes" and an admin post stating that it "shouldn't affect normal Foundry missions" (whatever they mean by "normal," of course...).
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paravelMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I watched a live stream of someone playing my quest after the patch. He was level 42 going in just under half way though level. By the time he finished he dinged 43. . I was watching closely to see if had been nerfed hard. So far I am happy and think its on par.
Do we actually know what the adjustments are? I see a lot of people saying that they "went too far" or have otherwise destroyed the viability of doing real foundry quests but as far as I know all we have is the patch notes saying "Foundry experience has been tweaked for balancing purposes" and an admin post stating that it "shouldn't affect normal Foundry missions" (whatever they mean by "normal," of course...).
What we have is the experience of players who have been playing in the foundry for days testing it today and finding that their tweak affected every mission in the foundry in excessively negative ways. They have punished everyone to the point of making it nearly useless to play any foundry based mission in order to stop players from doing what Cryptic said they approved of, farming. All they needed to do was create a mob reset to prevent the exploits but instead we got a knee jerk reaction that the very vocal minority demanded because their precious storylines weren't getting the plays they expected to get.
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
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cablepunkMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited May 2013
Yes, heaven forbid we should have fun slaying monsters for XP or items in the Foundry. Questing should be about running errands for lame NPCs and be dependent on the RNG for dropped items like "journals" and "hats" they want us to collect. Questing should be about running over an entire zone just to find that ONE drow assassin you need to kill to complete a quest for an NPC who stands around doing nothing when mobs chase a player back to him. The Foundry was breathing life into the stale mmorpg questing formula, and of course it still can, but stop acting like the people creating these ogre farms were doing something horrible. The most fun I've had in Neverwinter has been in dungeons, skirmishes, and on ogre farms. The least fun I've had has been questing. If you want a story, read a book. If you're too lazy for that, watch a movie. I play games to play games. If you want to level through questing, fair enough: that content has been provided to you by Cryptic. But if you want to have fun slaying monster after monster -- you know, actually playing that character you're putting so much work into in combat -- and get some XP and items in doing so, the people who created ogre farms filled that void.
Just put a tab for "Farm" and advertise it. Let them do what they do. Keep the farms out of the general content. Like zaph says, you can't stop it. Just give it it's place so we can find the real content we want.
Alas, this was proposed many times in CoH, and it was never done. The developers basically turned a blind eye to it after awhile, only adding tiny patches occasionally to nail down the worst of the exploiting.
Cryptic/PW, on the other hand, is not going to stand for this type of farming. Not only can one make "artistic" arguments about how it cheapens the game experience, but it also hurts PW's bottom line by damaging the 1-59 economy (nobody will spend gold/AD/Zen on stuff that's outclassed at 60).
I see several possible consequences (possibly all at once):
1. The limitations on Foundry content (or general game mechanics) are changed to prevent exploiting. Stuff like expanded collision enforcement for mobs, limitations on mob numbers, teleporting mobs, etcetera. This is probably the "best" solution in terms of player satisfaction, but it may not be the cheapest in terms of developer resources.
2. Foundry content gets its rewards changed. The smart way to do it would be to reduce kill XP and give a chunk of XP at the end chest that scales with average time-to-completion (like the loot item does already). This has the benefit of (probably?) being easy to implement while also solving the problem at its source.
3. Player power nerfs. They could take the popular farming AoEs and reduce their maximum number of targets. This is how they curtailed mob farming in Champions.
AHAHAHAHAHA they just screwed the only "innovative" thing about the game.
You where able to play the game as you wanted which was awesome, and if those foundry where popular was because people liked them.
There's only one issue with what you're proposing, I checked yesterday and some "xp farm" quests had high star ratings.
I don't really see an issue with the "XP farm" maps, however the exploit maps where monsters are setup in a way that they are unable to path to players is another thing entirely.
Also, I don't why this **** is coming as a surprise, it happens in EVERY SINGLE GAME with a player made content designer, it's inevitable with human nature that it would.
They just said this patch they are making adjustments to the foundry Xp.. I am willing to bet that the foundry is now going to be a ghost town with no one wanting to use it.
I would rather it be less populated, then full of people just trying to exploit xp to 60
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spiderbrigadeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 14Arc User
What we have is the experience of players who have been playing in the foundry for days testing it today and finding that their tweak affected every mission in the foundry in excessively negative ways.
Okay, good to know, thanks! Can you point me in the direction of some of good empirical posts so I can find out more specifics? I'm following various "Foundry Nerf" threads on this forum and they quickly turn into arguments about whether they should or should not have made the changes.
I just ran through my own map again (Its a good test as I have run it alot recently bug testing) I did not notice a significant drop in item droprate at all, I still have several green items including crafting materials and pleanty of scrolls/portals/pots etc
I did notice a pretty steep xp nerf though It didn't even give me a level of xp, but it was still enough for 30 minutes work, I don't think it will cause any long term issues at all.
Okay, good to know, thanks! Can you point me in the direction of some of good empirical posts so I can find out more specifics? I'm following various "Foundry Nerf" threads on this forum and they quickly turn into arguments about whether they should or should not have made the changes.
The posts are in there, you have to dig a little ways. The best thing to do is simply play the missions and see if you feel "rewarded" for your time afterward. If you feel like you are spending more in potions and recovery than you are receiving that is the information Cryptic needs right now so they can see just how far they mucked it up.
As to the argument, the real argument is among the have and the have nots. Those who want to have their fun but don't want anyone else to have fun if it isn't the same kind and those who want the game to be open to being played by more than 1% of the player base. A small number of very vocal people WERE crying the sky is falling, my precious content isn't getting played before the nerf because players were flocking to grind content for various reasons. Everyone agreed the exploiters were wrong, I can't be more specific regarding the exploit than to say the monsters were prevented from fighting back. Regardless these few kept screaming about farming being bad and never realized that it's just as easy for a level 60 to play their lore mission as it is for a level 5. This lead Cryptic to put in a nerf that they themselves said wasn't supposed to affect most players.
This has caused the argument to shift from "you can't farm" to "see what your farming did". Some are going so far as to lump all farming into the same category as exploiters and being for all intents and purposes the best examples of internet trolls you can find out side of league of legends. In the end the only thing that matters is whether anyone will continue to play the foundry or if due to the changes it makes the foundry something that punishes players for participation.
Of note it seems to bear through testing that the biggest impact is repeat visits to the same content. Now if that resets daily it MAY not be as large a nerf as it feels to be at the moment for those seeking to do lore based storytelling but it certainly is a huge slap in the face to anyone who was farming the foundry farm maps. It also bears mentioning that most of the player base were running those missions in one form or another and as such this nerf would impact all of those players.
Do you crave a good old fashioned dungeon crawl? One where the dungeon tells it's own story? The Dungeon Delves campaign is just for you! Start with my first release: NW-DQF4T7QYH Any cave can lead to adventure!
Okay, good to know, thanks! Can you point me in the direction of some of good empirical posts so I can find out more specifics? I'm following various "Foundry Nerf" threads on this forum and they quickly turn into arguments about whether they should or should not have made the changes.
I ran some quests that I had done in the past, not farming quests but ones with variety. They were combat heavy still which I simply enjoy. I noticed some monsters simply not granting exp when killed. I was still getting items to drop ok, at least greens. It seemed I was getting less potions/scrolls but I'm not sure.
The exp was clearly less though. They went overboard with this. As it stands there is no reason other than novelty to run these foundry quests anymore. To me that is a shame.
Okay, good to know, thanks! Can you point me in the direction of some of good empirical posts so I can find out more specifics? I'm following various "Foundry Nerf" threads on this forum and they quickly turn into arguments about whether they should or should not have made the changes.
I ran some quests that I had done in the past, not farming quests but ones with variety. They were combat heavy still which I enjoy. I noticed some monsters simply not granting exp when killed. I was still getting items to drop ok, at least greens. It seemed I was getting less potions/scrolls but I'm not sure.
The exp was clearly less though. They went overboard with this. As it stands there is no reason other than novelty to run these foundry quests anymore. To me that is a shame.
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grymzon1991Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 1Arc User
edited May 2013
This is stupid this game is almost based on the foundry, and i love the foundry i play the story quests and the "farm" quests too, even make my own little quests. i personally disliked WOW, Diablo, d2, d2 LOD, and D3, SW TOR, Tera, every game i have ever played because after i play the story once i dont want to play it again. I want my character to just level, so i can enjoy the end content with a new class. I love torchlight 2 because of this. my character is maxed out. What do to now... hey look at that, a new MOD, that adds more content. WOOT. Nerfing the foundry takes away from the game. It allows us to play how we want to play a game, and if that means 80% of the people who play the game use it to exploit the game fine go ahead let them, that's how they want to play the game. No reason why others need to be penalized for what other people enjoy doing. If that's what your going to do fine, ill play the game ONCE through just like every other game get bored of end game, not want to go through the entire story again to play another class. Quit and find another game to play.
My personal opinion.
LET THE PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT!!!!!
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xydsxlegendMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
This is stupid this game is almost based on the foundry, and i love the foundry i play the story quests and the "farm" quests too, even make my own little quests. i personally disliked WOW, Diablo, d2, d2 LOD, and D3, SW TOR, Tera, every game i have ever played because after i play the story once i dont want to play it again. I want my character to just level, so i can enjoy the end content with a new class. I love torchlight 2 because of this. my character is maxed out. What do to now... hey look at that, a new MOD, that adds more content. WOOT. Nerfing the foundry takes away from the game. It allows us to play how we want to play a game, and if that means 80% of the people who play the game use it to exploit the game fine go ahead let them, that's how they want to play the game. No reason why others need to be penalized for what other people enjoy doing. If that's what your going to do fine, ill play the game ONCE through just like every other game get bored of end game, not want to go through the entire story again to play another class. Quit and find another game to play.
My personal opinion.
LET THE PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT!!!!!
I agreed man
The foundry missions was the only thing that was keeping me in love with the game.
I loved the fact that I can spend hours after hours making a great story/farming map for other players in foundry. What is the point of making mission if you are not going to be award for it, 2k exp n 2 greens doesn't add to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
I been playing mmos for years, after the end game 9/10 I am going to leave the game.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Early Gamer Get the Levels"
by Profesor Legend
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darkfayte01Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
edited May 2013
this thread really makes me think of "if people play in any other way then i want them to, then this "fix" needs to be put in.". Unacceptable. Who cares if they use foundry to get to 60 before you? Who cares if they skip the entire story and dont know anything about "how to play their class"? Srsly, who cares. I drive 15mph over the speed limit, i live in TX, is this any where near you and your family? Does my speeding effect YOU in any way? It doesnt, and neither does this .... but i dont see you out there with the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> from Westborrow telling the world how messed up they are.
Rules in life:
Does this effect you? No, move on
Does this relate to you in any way? No, move on
Does this change your life? No, keep moving
Stop trying to throw a tea party on everything you "dislike". Did you spend $200 to make exploits? No? Didnt support the game either? Nice move bro ...
thanks for playing .. should i explain how i took your stupid *** to school or will you break the wrists and walk away?
Just want to add my voice to those who say fix the exploits but leave the powerlevelers and farmers alone. In my opinion, they are not who you should consider the target audience of this game. Yes, they are having fun doing their thing - grinding mobs - but they approach NW as an arcade game, not as a long-term RPG. They will never spend money on RMT, and once they are bored enough, they will leave.
You should consider a game like NWN, which is claimed to be a spiritual predecessor, and seriously examine what Bioware did to amass a dedicated following who - even 9 years later - are still creating content, building modules, and are still stubbornly loyal to a game that is woefully outdated. Provide us the tools, and show us that this game was made for us: the frustrated storytellers and wannabe game designers; the RPG players desperate for interesting and engaging content; the people who will play your game for many years to come.
The Foundry will make or break your game, and the more powerful and flexible you allow it to be, the more real long-term success you will have. MMO's are a dime a dozen; the only chance you have for making this game a success is to recognize your target audience and be loyal to them. If you make the mistake of focusing any of your attention on the locusts - who descend on every new game, devour the content, and move on - you will miss an opportunity to develop a fanbase as loyal as Bethesda or Bioware ever had.
The Foundry will make or break your game, and the more powerful and flexible you allow it to be, the more real long-term success you will have. MMO's are a dime a dozen; the only chance you have for making this game a success is to recognize your target audience and be loyal to them. If you make the mistake of focusing any of your attention on the locusts - who descend on every new game, devour the content, and move on - you will miss an opportunity to develop a fanbase as loyal as Bethesda or Bioware ever had.
Quoted for truth. The Foundry is amazing and has the potential to keep this game going long long after most people would have abandoned it. Make it flexible, don't limit it crazily and above all, don't nerf it into the ground.
The fastest way to kill this game is to nerf the Foundry constantly, as it's the best part of the game.
[Just as a disclaimer, I mostly run story-based Foundry missions, but having loot and xp comparable to the rest of the game is still important to me. I don't run grind maps (I don't consider straight dungeon-delves to be grind maps either) or exploit maps, ever.]
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divinehopeMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 48
edited May 2013
I hate questing, this XP farming was right up my alley as I prefer doing endgame stuff (therefor would have probably spent more money on there cash shop, for bags, and other things), but now I get bored after an hour of questing. I am also someone that bought to the two founders pack, so yeah...Can't say I didn't support the game.
Comments
Why should people spend more time than is necessary to get their desired result?
Anyway, reposting something from COH... Ye Olde Historye ofe COHe Farme Storye Arce*
Let me tell you a story about farming in City of Heroes. Note that the chronology may not be 100% accurate and I may be leaving some stuff out -- but all the stuff below happened at one point. I leave the drawing of any NW foundry parallels to the reader. Don't worry if you don't get some of the COH-specific slang... the point should be clear regardless.
Back in beta and shortly after launch, there were the stock mob farms. Family and Freakshow were enemy groups that didn't have any dangerous abilities, so the farmers would set up missions with maps that allowed for a LOT of spawns to be herded together, and just ran those. These were pretty vanilla, and comparable to running some 'farmy' official content (such as the Television story arc). But this period was pretty short, as farmers discovered the wonders of custom enemy groups.
First came boss farms: boss-only enemy groups without any meaningful attacks or with very pronounced weak points. At one point Rikti comm officer farms were all the rage, too -- these guys were LT level, but were basically pushovers... so you'd have custom enemy groups consisting of nothing but them. These were very lucrative, as you'd get a ton more xp from killing a boss than a lt and a lot more xp from killing a lt than a minion, and these bosses (or LTs) were clumped together for easy AOEability. Paragon reacted by nerfing xp from custom enemy groups unless they had one spawn of each type (boss, lt, minion).
Then came the friendly mob farms: lots of friendly mobs scattered on the map set to follow the player that didn't have attacks (and thus couldn't steal xp/tickets from the player), but a whole lot of player-buffing skills (kinetics defenders were typical for this). This was pretty popular for a time, and it was effective at powerlevelling. So Paragon required all custom mobs to have a basic attack, and only allowed the FIRST ally mob from each map to cast any abilities other than the basic attack. While this nerfed this specific kind of farm, it also nerfed quite a few legitimate story arcs that had you fighting as part of a team (such as Teen Phalanx Forever, one of the best storyarcs IMO)
Somewhere along the road came another targeted nerf: cutting xp from custom enemies unless they had a certain amount of powers. The formula was pretty convoluted, but basically you had to use their 'hard' presets for best effect (except for some special cases). This eliminated a lot of unoptimized farms, but left the optimized ones (or the ones using stock mobs) untouched. Also, Paragon occasionally nerfed the xp of special mob groups.. let me tell you how great it felt when I realized that the Hydra enemies I was using for a custom story arc (they fit the story) were only giving 50% of the xp of a normal mob because everyone was farming Hydras in Perez Park circa 2006 or whatever.
Somewhat parallel to this, some farmers were making custom farms that were tailored to a specific build. Fire farms and CEBR (claws/elec brute) farms were the most common, where the damage types done by the enemies were the ones that the powersets were most effective against, and the mobs themselves were weak to the build's primary damage type. These were HUGE, and there was no easy way to handle this without severely nerfing the powersets themselves... so Paragon basically admitted defeat at this point. Even at the end of COH's life, fire farms and CEBR farms were definitely a thing... they covered most of the browser, and made up most of the "Hall of Fame" (story arcs with 1k+ plays and 5-star averages).
Ambush versions of fire and CEBR farms were also super-popular. Basically you'd set up chained ambushes to spawn lots and lots and lots of enemies on the player... which would be easily defeated without the player having to move from the entrance, or (in some cases) even just killing themselves on the player's damage shields. This was kind of reminiscent of the old 'gather every single mob on the map into a burn patch' Tanker farms of 2004-2005. Many farms used patrols instead, which had the same effect on certain maps (and would continue working even if ambushes were nerfed)
Paragon also tried the exact same thing Cryptic seems to be trying now: banning and removing farms. This was (as expected) useless, as farmers just disguised their farms as legit content ('meow' was a keyword to search for them, for instance).
Summary (TLDR)
During the entire life of the COH MA, there were ALWAYS farms. They were ALWAYS at the top, no matter what Paragon tried. Sure, after a patch there was a day or two when the previous farms were broken, but the authors just came up with new farms. This is basically an unwinnable cat-and-mouse game. If you take drastic measures like removing all rewards from player-created content altogether or severely limiting the editor's capabilities, you can 'win'... but in my POV, that cost is not worth it. What you need to do is let the farmers farm, let the RPers RP, let the story authors make stories, let the challenge / hack-and-slash people make their challenge maps. We're All In This Together (tm).
Bonus part, not mentioned above: the brief period between I14 and I15 (I think?) where MA badges (click x items, free y hostages, get z ratings, etcetera) were still a thing. There were thousands of storyarcs dedicated to getting the badges and nothing else. Just like farming arcs, they crowded out almost everything else from the browser, so Paragon made the decision to remove 95% of those badges (and just leave the trivially-achievable ones). Note that NW has very similar achievements, so it's very possible we'll see something like this here -- especially since the foundry achievements actually have material rewards.
* yeah, the "e"s are superfluous on purpose. COME AT ME BRO!11
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
Now to correct the problem they hurt everyone. Short sighted people looking for their easy way to max level have thus ruined the foundry content even further. First they took away plays from good content, filled up all the pages of each catagory, and now they caused a big nerf to the foundry as a whole.
Bravo farmers... what part of the foundry are you going to ruin next?
Just make mobs that cannot reach their attacker because of AI (wont walk over traps) or physical barriers give no xp and reset them. Or perhaps summon the attacker to them such as Everquest mobs used to do.
Problem solved.
Nerfing Blue drops? I can understand that, stops everyone from being deck out easily.
Nerfing green drops? Hitting a grey area here, these are not hard to get outside the foundry and only serves to frustrate people as a nerf just to nerf.
Nerfing white drops? Stupid, plain and simple. No point to this AT ALL.
Nerfing gold? Now we are hitting DERP DURP DITTY DAY levels of stupid. Gold has NO VALUE, you cannot get AD with it, nor ZEN. Gold can only get you potions and injury kits and an endless supply of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> companions and mounts. It cannot ruin the economy since the economy is AD/ZEN based.
All this did was make a whole lot of people not want to do ANY foundry content at all since the cost is now less than the reward. The foundry was instantly made into nothing more than a money sink.
So a "farm" mission has more plays than mine? That "farm" mission will never be featured, so why should I care?
Horrible move, Cryptic... absolutely horrible move.
@kmhknight
My campaign: The Madness Plague.
My quest: Blacklake Gold
My guild: "The Older" Age 30+, Casual
Exploits are bad obviously, monsters not fighting back etc. Those should be reported and removed until patched.
They went way too far with this nerf. Foundry will become a distraction like in STO, which is such a shame.
What we have is the experience of players who have been playing in the foundry for days testing it today and finding that their tweak affected every mission in the foundry in excessively negative ways. They have punished everyone to the point of making it nearly useless to play any foundry based mission in order to stop players from doing what Cryptic said they approved of, farming. All they needed to do was create a mob reset to prevent the exploits but instead we got a knee jerk reaction that the very vocal minority demanded because their precious storylines weren't getting the plays they expected to get.
Alas, this was proposed many times in CoH, and it was never done. The developers basically turned a blind eye to it after awhile, only adding tiny patches occasionally to nail down the worst of the exploiting.
Cryptic/PW, on the other hand, is not going to stand for this type of farming. Not only can one make "artistic" arguments about how it cheapens the game experience, but it also hurts PW's bottom line by damaging the 1-59 economy (nobody will spend gold/AD/Zen on stuff that's outclassed at 60).
I see several possible consequences (possibly all at once):
1. The limitations on Foundry content (or general game mechanics) are changed to prevent exploiting. Stuff like expanded collision enforcement for mobs, limitations on mob numbers, teleporting mobs, etcetera. This is probably the "best" solution in terms of player satisfaction, but it may not be the cheapest in terms of developer resources.
2. Foundry content gets its rewards changed. The smart way to do it would be to reduce kill XP and give a chunk of XP at the end chest that scales with average time-to-completion (like the loot item does already). This has the benefit of (probably?) being easy to implement while also solving the problem at its source.
3. Player power nerfs. They could take the popular farming AoEs and reduce their maximum number of targets. This is how they curtailed mob farming in Champions.
You where able to play the game as you wanted which was awesome, and if those foundry where popular was because people liked them.
Congratulations. ^^
I don't really see an issue with the "XP farm" maps, however the exploit maps where monsters are setup in a way that they are unable to path to players is another thing entirely.
Also, I don't why this **** is coming as a surprise, it happens in EVERY SINGLE GAME with a player made content designer, it's inevitable with human nature that it would.
I would rather it be less populated, then full of people just trying to exploit xp to 60
EDIT: I fouhd this thread http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?204312-Foundry-Nerf-and-Items which is more focused on item drop rates post-nerf but gets into XP a bit, for instance:
The posts are in there, you have to dig a little ways. The best thing to do is simply play the missions and see if you feel "rewarded" for your time afterward. If you feel like you are spending more in potions and recovery than you are receiving that is the information Cryptic needs right now so they can see just how far they mucked it up.
As to the argument, the real argument is among the have and the have nots. Those who want to have their fun but don't want anyone else to have fun if it isn't the same kind and those who want the game to be open to being played by more than 1% of the player base. A small number of very vocal people WERE crying the sky is falling, my precious content isn't getting played before the nerf because players were flocking to grind content for various reasons. Everyone agreed the exploiters were wrong, I can't be more specific regarding the exploit than to say the monsters were prevented from fighting back. Regardless these few kept screaming about farming being bad and never realized that it's just as easy for a level 60 to play their lore mission as it is for a level 5. This lead Cryptic to put in a nerf that they themselves said wasn't supposed to affect most players.
This has caused the argument to shift from "you can't farm" to "see what your farming did". Some are going so far as to lump all farming into the same category as exploiters and being for all intents and purposes the best examples of internet trolls you can find out side of league of legends. In the end the only thing that matters is whether anyone will continue to play the foundry or if due to the changes it makes the foundry something that punishes players for participation.
Of note it seems to bear through testing that the biggest impact is repeat visits to the same content. Now if that resets daily it MAY not be as large a nerf as it feels to be at the moment for those seeking to do lore based storytelling but it certainly is a huge slap in the face to anyone who was farming the foundry farm maps. It also bears mentioning that most of the player base were running those missions in one form or another and as such this nerf would impact all of those players.
I ran some quests that I had done in the past, not farming quests but ones with variety. They were combat heavy still which I simply enjoy. I noticed some monsters simply not granting exp when killed. I was still getting items to drop ok, at least greens. It seemed I was getting less potions/scrolls but I'm not sure.
The exp was clearly less though. They went overboard with this. As it stands there is no reason other than novelty to run these foundry quests anymore. To me that is a shame.
I ran some quests that I had done in the past, not farming quests but ones with variety. They were combat heavy still which I enjoy. I noticed some monsters simply not granting exp when killed. I was still getting items to drop ok, at least greens. It seemed I was getting less potions/scrolls but I'm not sure.
The exp was clearly less though. They went overboard with this. As it stands there is no reason other than novelty to run these foundry quests anymore. To me that is a shame.
My personal opinion.
LET THE PEOPLE DO WHAT THEY WANT!!!!!
I agreed man
The foundry missions was the only thing that was keeping me in love with the game.
I loved the fact that I can spend hours after hours making a great story/farming map for other players in foundry. What is the point of making mission if you are not going to be award for it, 2k exp n 2 greens doesn't add to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
I been playing mmos for years, after the end game 9/10 I am going to leave the game.
Rules in life:
Does this effect you? No, move on
Does this relate to you in any way? No, move on
Does this change your life? No, keep moving
Stop trying to throw a tea party on everything you "dislike". Did you spend $200 to make exploits? No? Didnt support the game either? Nice move bro ...
thanks for playing .. should i explain how i took your stupid *** to school or will you break the wrists and walk away?
You should consider a game like NWN, which is claimed to be a spiritual predecessor, and seriously examine what Bioware did to amass a dedicated following who - even 9 years later - are still creating content, building modules, and are still stubbornly loyal to a game that is woefully outdated. Provide us the tools, and show us that this game was made for us: the frustrated storytellers and wannabe game designers; the RPG players desperate for interesting and engaging content; the people who will play your game for many years to come.
The Foundry will make or break your game, and the more powerful and flexible you allow it to be, the more real long-term success you will have. MMO's are a dime a dozen; the only chance you have for making this game a success is to recognize your target audience and be loyal to them. If you make the mistake of focusing any of your attention on the locusts - who descend on every new game, devour the content, and move on - you will miss an opportunity to develop a fanbase as loyal as Bethesda or Bioware ever had.
Quoted for truth. The Foundry is amazing and has the potential to keep this game going long long after most people would have abandoned it. Make it flexible, don't limit it crazily and above all, don't nerf it into the ground.
The fastest way to kill this game is to nerf the Foundry constantly, as it's the best part of the game.
[Just as a disclaimer, I mostly run story-based Foundry missions, but having loot and xp comparable to the rest of the game is still important to me. I don't run grind maps (I don't consider straight dungeon-delves to be grind maps either) or exploit maps, ever.]